Leaving my favorite Italian seafood restaurant, I turned right and walked along a path with a park on one side and condos on the other. I always enjoyed the pleasant half-mile stroll from the restaurant to the Kennedy Center. It was quiet and rather pretty. Silly me.
A Vampire, a little too smooth and graceful to be Human, walked toward me. I knew I shouldn’t be prejudiced, but I always tensed up in the presence of sentient beings who ate other sentient beings. I slipped my hand into my bag and fingered my knife. We walked by each other, him trying for eye contact, and me avoiding it. He kept going, and I relaxed.
In that moment, as soon as I let my guard down a little, a hand grabbed me around the neck, long claws sinking into my skin, and tried to pull me down to the ground. My athame was still in my hand, so while I resisted going down, I let my attacker pull me to her.
Her? Yes, the new Vampire was definitely female, and definitely surprised when the athame penetrated below her breast and into her heart. Her mouth opened wide, showing her fangs, but no sound came out. The shock in her eyes gradually dimmed, and her grip on my throat relaxed.
I pushed her away and whirled to meet who or what made a sound behind me. It was the male I had just passed. He wasn’t looking at me, though. His eyes were fixed in horror on the woman slumping to the ground.
“Friend of yours?” I asked.
He turned his gaze to me, and I thought I saw a bit of fear there. But his eyes slid back to the woman, really not much older than a girl. He was young, too. He moved toward me, but slowly. I stepped aside, and he knelt down by her.
I moved a few yards off, pulled an old scarf from my bag, and cleaned my knife. Then I folded the scarf, put some disinfectant on it, and pressed it to the deep scratches on my neck. I couldn’t see if there was blood on my dress.
Although I was only a mile from home, I didn’t have time to go home, dress my wound, change clothes, and make it back to the Kennedy Center for the performance. So much for that ticket. I looked back at the young couple on the ground. On his knees, he had gathered her into his arms and held her, silently rocking back and forth. Tears ran down his cheeks.
He should have taken her to the local blood bar, but they tried for something exotic instead of cow blood. Not a smart choice.
In the pale light of a soft mid-autumn evening, I decided that it was time for me to get the hell out of Washington for a while and go on holiday.
The following day, when I went into the nursery, I called my staff together. It was mid-October, and I only had four people still working for me, down from thirty during the summer. My landscaping business was almost dormant during the winter, but we had some specialized contracts with a few customers, and the nursery itself needed some maintenance.
The evening before, feeling a bit guilty that I planned to abandon my staff, I baked a cake for them. We met in the cottage kitchen, and I served coffee and cake. When everyone had their mouths full, I announced, “I need a vacation. What are everyone’s plans between now and March?”
“We’re shutting down for three weeks at Christmas,” Maurine O’Malley, my office manager said, “just like we always do. I’m going to Colorado then.”
Kathy Long, my accountant, said, “Other than Christmas, I normally just work four days a week in the winter. No big plans to go anywhere. We can’t afford it.” Kathy’s husband was in medical school and they had big plans for the future.
My foreman, Ed Gillespie, said, “Jamie and I are going up to Canada to see her parents at Christmas, but other than that, we’ll just hang around DC all winter.” Jamie was his girlfriend and my other employee. She helped Ed with mowing lawns, tending the greenhouses, and general maintenance around the nursery.
There were two Gnomes who lived under a mound in the nursery, Fred and Kate. I didn’t need to check with them since they never went anywhere. They did a lot of work for me, and I knew they would take care of the plants I had in the greenhouses. Those greenhouses were their major source of food in the winter.
The other inhabitants of the nursery were the fairies, but they were already preparing to hibernate through the winter. When the first frost hit, we wouldn’t see them again until spring.
“So, where are you going?” Jamie asked.
“I discovered recently that I have a cousin in Ireland,” I said. “She’s invited me to visit, so that’s where I plan to start.” I shrugged. “Bum around Europe, see the museums, hit the Mediterranean and see if I can find a billionaire who needs his yacht landscaped. You know, the usual.”
They all laughed.
And so, I contacted my cousin in Ireland, made plane reservations, and took care of all the piddly stuff my staff insisted I do before I left. By the end of the week, I was ready to head to the airport. Then the letter came.
Most of my mail consisted of bills, advertisements, and unwelcome communications from the government. Most of that went to my business address. My closest friend preferred email, and all my employees texted me. So, a letter addressed to my real name, arriving at my home, was unusual.
A faint residual trace of magic lingered on the envelope—from either the sender or someone else who handled it. I tore it open and stared at the elegant Elvish script.
Sel Kellana,
An urgent matter requires your attention. I understand that you will be in Iceland and have taken the liberty of changing your flight plans. My representatives will meet you at the airport and escort you to Alfenholm.
<signed> Lord Altinir ap th’Vordinir
I read it twice, absolutely thrilled that some damned refugee Elven lord from Alfheim had changed my holiday plans. At least he was polite enough to tell me. I wondered what Altinir and his representatives would do if I declined his invitation.
Re-reading it again, I felt a brief moment of irritation and despair for my people. All four major Elven groups on Earth had called their settlements Alfenholm. So much for creativity. I tried to imagine the look on Altinir’s face if I showed up at the wrong one. Probably, it would piss him off, plus it would piss off the lords and ladies at the place where I did show up. I had met very few Elven nobles, but they weren’t known for a sense of humor.
My flight was booked through Reykjavik to Dublin in Ireland, and my distant cousin would meet me there. I had never met her, but she contacted me after the Washington, D.C., “incident” the previous summer and invited me to spend Samhain with her and her family. “Incident” was what the press and the government insisted on calling a magical catastrophe that was almost followed by a civil war between Humans and paranormals, as Humans liked to call any being who didn’t show up in Earth’s fossil record.
No matter how hard I had tried to keep a low profile, word of my involvement leaked to the press. And as much as I would have liked to shove a microphone up a couple of people’s butts, that would have been rude, and Elves were never rude. Thus, the letter from Altinir, politely informing me that he felt entitled to redirect my life. I had to assume he had heard about me the same way my cousin had. From the damned TV.
I seriously doubted that I would consider his ‘urgent matter’ as being very urgent to me. But as I went about the rest of my day, I realized that I was very curious. The old bastard probably counted on that.
